Spirits in Bondage | Page 8

pearly
Cold
and cold on every meadow,
To take his joy of the season early,
The opening flower
and the westward shadow,
And scarcely can he dream of laughter and love,
They lie
so many leaden years behind.
Such eyes are dim and blind,
And the sad, aching head
that nods above
His monstrous books can never know
The secret we would find.

But let our seer be young and kind
And fresh and beautiful of show,
And taken ere
the lustyhead
And rapture of his youth be dead;
Ere the gnawing, peasant reason

School him over-deep in treason
To the ancient high estate
Of his fancy's principate,

That he may live a perfect whole,
A mask of the eternal soul,
And cross at last the
shadowy bar
To where the ever-living are.
XVII. The Ocean Strand
O leave the labouring roadways of the town,
The shifting faces and the changeful hue

Of markets, and broad echoing streets that drown
The heart's own silent music. Though

they too
Sing in their proper rhythm, and still delight
The friendly ear that loves warm
human kind,
Yet it is good to leave them all behind,
Now when from lily dawn to
purple night
Summer is queen,
Summer is queen in all the happy land.
Far, far away
among the valleys green
Let us go forth and wander hand in hand
Beyond those
solemn hills that we have seen
So often welcome home the falling sun
Into their
cloudy peaks when day was doneBeyond
them till we find the ocean strand
And hear
the great waves run,
With the waste song whose melodies I'd follow
And weary not
for many a summer day,
Born of the vaulted breakers arching hollow
Before they
flash and scatter into spray,
On, if we should be weary of their play
Then I would lead
you further into land
Where, with their ragged walls, the stately rocks
Shunt in
smooth courts and paved with quiet sand
To silence dedicate. The sea-god's flocks

Have rested here, and mortal eyes have seen
By great adventure at the dead of noon
A
lonely nereid drowsing half a-swoon
Buried beneath her dark and dripping locks.
XVIII. Noon
Noon! and in the garden bower
The hot air quivers o'er the grass,
The little lake is
smooth as glass
And still so heavily the hour
Drags, that scarce the proudest flower

Pressed upon its burning bed
Has strength to lift a languid head:
-Rose and fainting
violet
By the water's margin set
Swoon and sink as they were dead
Though their
weary leaves be fed
With the foam-drops of the pool
Where it trembles dark and cool

Wrinkled by the fountain spraying
O'er it. And the honey-bee
Hums his drowsy
melody

And wanders in his course a-straying
Through the sweet and tangled glade

With his golden mead o'erladen,
Where beneath the pleasant shade
Of the darkling
boughs a maiden
-Milky limb and fiery tress,
All at sweetest random laidSlumbers,

drunken with the excess
Of the noontide's loveliness.
XIX. Milton Read Again (In Surrey)
Three golden months while summer on us stole
I have read your joyful tale another
time,
Breathing more freely in that larger clime
And learning wiselier to deserve the
whole.
Your Spirit, Master, has been close at hand
And guided me, still pointing treasures rare,

Thick-sown where I before saw nothing fair
And finding waters in the barren land,
Barren once thought because my eyes were dim.
Like one I am grown to whom the
common field
And often-wandered copse one morning yield
New pleasures suddenly;
for over him
Falls the weird spirit of unexplained delight,
New mystery in every shady place,
In
every whispering tree a nameless grace,
New rapture on the windy seaward height.

So may she come to me, teaching me well
To savour all these sweets that lie to hand

In wood and lane about this pleasant land
Though it be not the land where I would
dwell.
.
XX. Sonnet
The stars come out; the fragrant shadows fall
About a dreaming garden still and sweet,

I hear the unseen bats above me bleat
Among the ghostly moths their hunting call,

And twinkling glow-worms all about me crawl.
Now for a chamber dim, a pillow meet

For slumbers deep as death, a faultless sheet,
Cool, white and smooth. So may I
reach the hall
With poppies strewn where sleep that is so dear
With magic sponge can
wipe away an hour
Or twelve and make them naught. Why not a year,
Why could a
man not loiter in that bower
Until a thousand painless cycles wore,
And then-what if
it held him evermore?
XXI. The Autumn Morning
See! the pale autumn dawn
Is faint, upon the lawn
That lies in powdered white
Of hoar-frost dight
And now from tree to tree
The ghostly mist we see
Hung like a silver pall
To hallow all.
It wreathes the burdened air
So strangely everywhere
That I could almost fear
This silence drear
Where no one song-bird sings
And dream that wizard things
Mighty for hate or love
Were close above.
White as the fog and fair
Drifting through the middle air
In magic dances dread
Over my head.
Yet these should know me too
Lover and bondman true,
One that has honoured well
The mystic spell
Of earth's most solemn hours
Wherein the ancient powers
Of dryad, elf, or faun
Or leprechaun
Oft have their faces shown
To me that walked alone
Seashore or haunted fen

Or mountain glen
Wherefore I